IBM (APC) UPS stupid made

My cousin was moving his business. He has a handyman/courier/cleaner guy and got him to shift stuff. Apparently he picked up this IBM

1500 VA UPS, which is pretty heavy with fingers under the front panel. The front panel just clips on,and it came off, the case dropping about 20 cm. There is a board with 16 LEDs on the front panel, attached by a ribbon cable. The cable was torn almost off, despite that the LED board clips on pretty loosely. Other end of the cable goes back to main circuit board. Now why couldn't they connect this with plugs at each end? It is the really flat ribbon cable, half a mm thick at most. I tried scraping plastic off to expose the conductor, but very difficult. In the end, had to cut off stupid ribbon cable, and solder 8 pieces of wire between the two boards. The front panel does not clip back so neatly now, but at least the thing works again. BTW the innards appear to be made by APC with IBM putting their own cosmetics on it.